Lenbachhaus

I finally got round to visiting the newly-opened Lenbachhaus this week, and wasn’t left disappointed.

I’d read a few reviews with people complaining that it was looking a little chaotic, and the modernity combined with the old Florentine-style villa just didn’t work. I thought it worked quite neatly, but I do concede that at times, it feels quite chaotic. Especially the post-1945 stuff. Too many movements, too many mediums and too many artists at once. However, I still had a fantastic time.

When you enter, you’ll come across a huge, beautiful installation by Danish-Icelandic artist Olafur Eliasson, the centrepiece of the whole museum:

Did you know that Eliasson also designed the stairs at KPMG in Westend?

I started off in the old villa, with lots of Erwin Wurm pieces. I felt that the modernity and the old were quite nicely combined here:

This made me giggle, it’s called Anger Bump:

Perhaps I could have captured it better from the side…

I love Erwin Wurm’s humour, and happily, there are many more of his pieces in the Lenbachhaus. You move on around the villa to many pieces of nature art, which I can appreciate, but I do get a little bored with them after a while. There were some stunning sculptures though:

After a little wandering around, I decided to move on to the post-1945 art. There was such a mix of installations, sculptures, paintings, neon lights, videos and more, and it was difficult to take it all in.

There’s an exhibition dedicated to Joseph Beuys running on the second floor, so I took a look at some of his masterpieces, including Show Your Wound, which has also been exhibited in London’s Tate Modern.

It was created in Munich in 1974-75, reflecting on Beuys’ injuries suffered in World War II, his heart attack in 1975 and on a more general scale, on Germany’s past.

I always get a sore head when I’m looking at art for a long period of time, so I decided to spend a few minutes in the beautiful Lenbachhaus garden – they have plenty of seats and benches outside for you to sit and reflect:

And then it was on to the Blaue Reiter exhibition. There were SO many paintings from Wassily Kandinsky, his lover Gabriele Münter, Paul Klee, Franz Marc and August Macke. It was breathtaking. Franz Marc’s beautiful Blue Horse I is also included in the exhibition, one of my favourite paintings.

I can’t recommend the Lenbachhaus enough – the architecture is stunning, the gardens are a perfect retreat, and the exhibitions are well worth your time.

If you have a little time to spare afterward, head over to Ella, the cafe/restaurant next door. They do really good Italian food – I had a parma ham bruschetta with salad, and the dressing was marvellous.

Tickets cost 10 € for adults, and the Lenbachhaus is open every day except Monday. More information is available here.